Event

Film Screening: Deadbeat At Dawn (Dir. Jim Van Bebber)

Cult film director Van Bebber first found notoriety with Deadbeat at Dawn, a street-gang movie based around the exploits of Goose, the leader of a Dayton, Ohio street gang. After one too many scrapes with a rival gang, Goose's girlfriend demands that he quit gang life for good. He tries to pull off one more drug deal before leaving, but this results in the brutal slaying of his girlfriend. The set-up lends itself to a fairly run-of-the mill slice of revengesploitation, but Van Bebber injected enough energy and cartoonish violence to elevate this film above the likes of 1990: Bronx Warriors, creating a kind of "Warriors on dangerous amounts of steroids". The climax is a particularly jaw-dropping affair, with fingers bitten off, gouged throats, and multiple stab wounds administered willy-nilly.